It's hard to trust the current trajectories on eurozone countries. The idea for them goes that you balance the books and interest rates go down--but wait a minute, this chart reminds us that another very important factor is at play in determining future debt levels: GDP growth.

And it's a matter of mainstream economics that when you cut spending and raise taxes while the economy is not functioning around its potential capacity (i.e. still in recession or yet to recover), ceteris paribus, usually you hurt growth. And simply talking according to this interactive feature, when you hurt growth your debt burden increases, which makes the markets more anxious, which will in turn demand higher interest rates on your debt.

A bit off subject, but it is disturbing how much debt that Republican administrations have saddled the US with.

I am Republican, and do recognize that the legislatures may be controlled by the opposition.

However, the Republicans had the Senate until 1986; and both houses from 2001 through 2006.

And it seems most of the actions in the 2008 time frame were heavily executive driven (brow beat the legislature with threats of financial armaggedon).

My suspicion is that lower tax rates for a small, but influential extremist week takes priority over fiscal responsibility - paradoxically producing an irresponsible borrow and spend dynamic that is far worse than tax and spend. At least the pain of taxes could hone peoples' minds about policies and their impact on everyday lives.

Now you see one of the main reasons that many of us who used to vote Republican don't anymore. When the GOP is in power, "Deficits don't matter". It's only when the Democrats are in charge that Republicans break out their "Deficit Doom" t-shirts and caps.

I was trying to show exactly the same as you only that my post was intended as an irony: that same policies that increase government debt are proposed as solutions (to the increasing government debt). There's a smiley in "job creation:)."

I think this is misleading, the real thing that matter is the spread between the rate the BCE lend to bank system and the rate (much higher) bank system lend to the Europeans Government! This has to end! International banks are making huge profits on European citizen's shoulders! BCE should lend directly to governments or, even better, directly to european citizens! We have to understand this if we want to exit this crisis! Otherwise banks will drain all the blood (money) needed to sustain our economy. Ask the central bank to change its policy!

What is to know is that indebted America can use its FED to lower the value of the dollar and thereby diminish the debt's burden. Moreover, a debt, isn't just a debt. The " nature " of the debt also matters as there's basically a difference between a country digging its debt so as to survive and a country digging its debt to invest, or everything linked to growth. That's a point we - readers- should consider.

... but mispredicting average yearly inflation by two percentage points is either very unlikely, or would signify a low reliability of the model in general, which would deem the prediction practically irrelevant. Given a prediction for a certain year and a 5% significance level, this would imply a variance of 8. Quite high when one predicts the actual inflation to be 5.1%

Then there will be a default! When people loose job, you give dole. When Bank folds, you bail it out. We may soon know what you do top a bankrupt nation. Nobody is bailing out Somalia - All pay ransom to keep the country alive.

There will be default in the Euro zone. Everywhere else, particularly the US and Japan, expect inflation/devaluation. Look back to 1945, the last time the US had this big a debt. They didn't pay off the debt. They grew the economy and allowed inflation to whittle away the significance of the debt pile. American citizens got a very poor return on their war bonds. That habit of inflation eventually caught up with the US in the 1970s and it got out of control, but 30 years after Volker, I bet we are headed for more of the same.

What is frightening is contemplating what will happen when Japan decides to start paying off its debt by printing money. There are going to be a lot of unhappy retired Japanese when the real value of their government savings bonds starts shrinking. The Japanese can manage their huge debt pile until the day they can't anymore, and then the wrath of the bond market will strike very quickly. The Japanese won't default (probably), but the yen could fall dramatically.